


It Must Have Been God's Day Off

by MyEvilTwin (ProtoNeoRomantic)



Series: Blood Screaming [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Action, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Sexual Situations, Awkwardness, Backstory, Bisexuality, Blood, Cock & Ball Torture, Creepy flirting, Dysfunctional Family, Emergency Contraception, Family Secrets, Flashbacks, Forgery, Kidnapping, Lost Panties, Lust, Making Out, Multi, Murder, Not Wearing Underwear, Not Wearing a Bra, Public Nudity, Revenge, Sexual Assault, Sexual Humor, Shopping Malls, Suicidal Thoughts, Vaginal Fingering, Vampires, What Have I Done, What Was I Thinking?, sexual innuendo, where do we go from here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 11:11:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1264219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/MyEvilTwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Willow tries to help Buffy and Giles deal with the consequences of one crazy Friday night, Angel takes something from her that she can never get back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Light Bulb

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Lady's Choice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223416) by [ProtoNeoRomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic). 
  * Inspired by [Who Do You Think You Are?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1235281) by [ProtoNeoRomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic). 



> For more information on Canon Compliance/Divergence and Story Mechanics and Themes, see series description.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sometimes a thing get's broke, can't be fixed."  
> ~Kaylee Frye 
> 
> "Mistake! Bollix! It was a bloody revelation!"  
> ~Spike
> 
> "The answer to all of these questions is both yes and no."  
> ~Pierre Abelard

The gray light of dawn filtered through Buffy’s bedroom window, waking her from none too peaceful a sleep. Willow lay next to her, hugging her pillow, sighing and muttering in response to her own disturbed dreams. Buffy dressed quickly in a skirt and a tank top, grateful that her Slayer healing powers had erased the marks left on her body by last night’s intimate encounter with asphalt. She wished the rest of the events of last night could be erased as easily, that she could un-have had sex with Giles, that Angel could un-have killed Jenny.

She walked out into the Saturday morning sunshine, wandering aimlessly, hoping to clear her head; but it refused to be cleared. Jenny Calendar was dead. Angel was responsible. Buffy was responsible. Giles was devastated and alone. She longed to go to him. Yet, she couldn’t seem to make her footsteps wander in the direction of his apartment. She wanted to be there for him, but she couldn’t imagine being in a relationship with him. As sordid a light as it cast on the events of last night, he was still more like a second father to her than anything else.

Like a father! Guilt and fear stabbed Buffy in the heart. She thought again of all those little sperm swimming inside of her. Had they gotten where they were going by now? She knew that she needed to talk to Giles. She also knew that she didn’t want to call him from her home and risk her mom or even Willow overhearing. Right or wrong, the conversation they needed to have was between lovers. It was intimate, private. She regretted having told Willow as much as she had about the sex they had had. She had just been so in shock. It hadn’t seemed real. Giles was not the kind of person who would have sex with a teenage girl. Not the kind of person who might accidentally get someone pregnant. Even when she’d put her hand on his big, beautiful, amazing cock and begged him to put it inside her, she’d never _really_ thought he would actually do it. But he did. And it was a moment she could not un-live, could not un-feel. And there were deep, dark scary parts of her that longed to feel it again.

****

The dream fled quickly as Willow was rudely yanked from sleep by the ringing phone at Buffy’s bedside. Shreds of scattered images, sensations, ideas fluttered through her consciousness: soft, gentle lips pressed to hers, their mouths mutually opening to one another as the dark, starry night at the hinge of her thighs was opened to admit an interlocking universe exploding into being. Blonde hair brushing her neck. A man’s rough hands grasping her breasts. Round full breasts rising under _her_ grateful hands, familiar, but not her own. Also something about a woman turning into a cat. Willow’s nightgown was soaked with sweat. She felt oddly disappointed to find that she was alone. Hesitating only a moment she picked up the phone, having the vague, sleepy idea that it might be Buffy.

She didn’t even get the chance to say ‘hello’. “Buffy?!” Giles cried out, his voice desperate and shaken.

Willow did her best to suppress a sudden, furious wave of anger that welled up within her at the sound of him, an overwhelming resentment, as though he was withholding something that belonged to her. “No!” she said, shocked by the hardness of her own voice, trying hard to convince herself that what she felt was only protectiveness towards Buffy, concern that she would be hurt by their affair. “It’s Willow,” she said, deliberately softening her tone.“I... just woke up, but I can see if Buffy is here.”

“Would you, please?” said Giles gratefully. “I... I need to talk to her, right away. I—she—I just... need to talk to her!”Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with pity for him. She wanted to put her arms around him, to comfort him, to tell him it would be alright. But she still held a firm conviction that someone should be looking out for Buffy. Someone not Rupert Giles. Someone whose judgment wasn’t clouded by even the tiniest particle of desire to fuck her.

She put the receiver down on the bedspread and walked across the room to dutifully peer out into the empty hallway. “Buffy, telephone,” she called softly. No response, of course.“I’m sorry,” she told Giles, returning to the phone after what she judged was a decent interval. “She must have left while I was still asleep.”

She heard Giles muffled cursing through the hand he’d placed over his mouthpiece. “Do you know where—did she...did she have any...erm plans today, that you know of?” he asked. He was making a valiant but unsuccessful effort to sound less desperate.

Willow felt guilty but no less resolved. “I’m not sure,” she hedged, which was true, “I have to go soon though,” which was not, “but I’ll try to let her know you called... if I see her,” a blatant lie.

Giles’ tone sharpened slightly in spite of him. “Willow,” he asked, “Did Buffy tell you anything...erm... strange...about last night?” Like the fact that we had sexual intercourse against the peace and dignity of the State of California he dishonestly failed to add, infuriating her again.

“No!” she said much too quickly, then, “I can’t talk right now. Bye.” She slammed down the phone. Damn. That had not gone well. Giles wasn’t an idiot. He had to know that she knew _something_ about last night. He could probably guess that she knew everything.

Willow found Buffy two hours later sitting alone at the Espresso Pump, staring glassily into her coffee. She must have gotten dressed without really thinking. She was practically nude to the waist, wearing a white cotton tank top with neither a shirt nor a bra. “Just happened to be passing by?” she joked, looking up as Willow sat down.

Willow shook her head, feeling ‘embarrassed’ again. She was so ‘embarrassed’ that she had to sit with her legs tightly crossed, trying hard to suppress the feeling that her vagina was exposed and humming like some kind of beacon, broadcasting a signal to the world: _Attention All Dicks! Horny Available Virgin Pussy Dead Ahead!_ “I’ve been looking for you,” she admitted. “I’m worried about you.”

Buffy looked down thoughtfully at her coffee.“Yeah,” she said grimly, “I’m worried about me too.”

“Are you still worried about Giles... wanting a relationship?” she guessed.

Buffy shook her head. “I’m a big girl,” she said, “I can ‘just say no’ to really amazing sex. I think. And he’s a big boy, too, for that matter.”

“Yeah!” said Willow, maybe a little too keenly. “You mentioned that last night.”

Buffy rolled her eyes, blushing just a little. “I’m not talking about the size of his dick gutter brain. I just meant... last night was a fluke. There were circumstances. On a normal day, he’s way beyond grownup enough to keep it in his pants. He’s probably shaking his head right now going ‘Wow, what the Hell was I thinking?’I’m really more worried about... what’s already happened.”

“Well... what’s done is done,” Willow pointed out, feeling inept for having nothing better to say. Feeling childish for wanting to hear more about the ins and outs and in agains of sex with Giles and his reportedly gigantic penis.

“True...” Buffy murmured pensively. Could she really, she wondered, just say no? Like repeatedly, every single day, forever? “...but that doesn’t mean there might not be...”He’s still Giles, she tried reminding herself, but that didn’t do much counteract the memory of the intense sexual pleasure he’d given her, it just made her feel majorly weird about it.“consequences.”

“Such as?” Willow asked.

“Well,” Buffy reminded her nervously, “He _came_ inside me. Plus I started my period like exactly two weeks ago today. I’m worried I’m gonna get pregnant. God, how bizarre would that be! I could be _pregnant_ by _Giles_!”

Willow was shocked. Then she was shocked at herself for being shocked. Why hadn’t she thought of such an obvious problem? She was such an idiot! “Wow, Buffy,” she stammered, “I never—I mean, Giles is so... responsible. I guess—I mean, I would have thought—”

“What?” Buffy challenged sardonically, “That he’d bring along a box of condoms on an arson and revenge killing spree, in case it turned into a romantic evening?”

“Well...no,” Willow had to admit. “I guess not, but what about—I mean you’re not on the Pill?”

Buffy shook her head. “Well you know An—vampires, you know, they can’t. And I never thought—I mean I haven’t even thought about having sex again since—” Buffy’s voice broke off miserably. Since she had burned the humanity out of her last lover with the power of her touch, Willow realized, horrified on her behalf.

“It’s, okay, Buffy,” Willow said, brightening, realizing that it probably was, “I mean, it takes a few days after sex to actually _get_ pregnant. I’m pretty sure you can still take something to stop it.”

“Seriously?” Buffy asked hopefully. “Is there really something I can do?”

“I think so,” Willow said, “I know the hospitals where Dad has privileges have something they give to... to...” Willow averted her eyes, “rape victims. I’m sure it would work in this situation too. I bet I can find out what it is. My parents have tons of medical books. And we can look on the net. Why don’t you come over now?”she suggested. “Mom’s at a conference, and Dad’s probably at the clinic.”

Buffy sighed. For once, heading into deep research mode actually sounded like a relatively attractive option, but she knew she was just putting off the inevitable. “I don’t know, Wil,” she said. “At this point, it kind of feels like I’m avoiding Giles. I mean, I told him I would call him this morning, and it’s already after ten.”

“Maybe you _should_ call him,” Willow suggested, her voice high pitched and forcibly bright, “you know, on the phone, from my house.”She had a gut feeling that Buffy and Giles meeting, alone was a bad idea, that it might in fact lead to yet more sex, and yet more trouble.

“Tell, you what,” Buffy suggested. “Why don’t you start working on it, just go ahead and dive right in, and I’ll come over later and help you finish.”

“I could come with you,” Willow offered.

“To make sure we don’t rip each other’s clothes off again?” Buffy laughed, “I think I’d better risk it, otherwise he’ll know I told you about the sex.”

Willow looked suddenly pale. “Actually,” she admitted, turning almost green, “I think maybe he sort of ... already knows. Well, suspects anyway,” she back peddled quickly. “He called this morning, looking for you... and he was sort of... fishing to see if I knew anything, you know, without telling me anything...”

“Willow!” Buffy demanded, horrified, “when were you going to tell me about this?!”

“Well,” Willow stammered, “I... um... I guess I just... didn’t...um...”

“He must be going crazy wondering who else knows about this,” Buffy railed, exasperated. “Willow, this is a felony for Christ’s sake! Giles could go to prison! Or get thrown out of the country! He must be scare to death! I’d better get over there.” As she rushed off, she added over her shoulder, “I’ll...come by later... I guess... about the... Pill thing.”

****

Bath, England, June,1956

“It worked,” Andrew said when he felt her enter the room, “She’s coming.” His voice was blank. He did not turn. Instead he picked up his cigarette and took a long drag.

“I told you it would,” said Helena matter-of-factly, then added, somewhere between scolding and concern. “I wish you hadn’t taken those things up again. They’re bad for your health you know.”

“Fuck you, Mother,” he said just as blankly as before. Then he smiled sardonically and shook his head. Helena chose to ignore all of that, including the relatively subtle insinuation that being a frigid bitch was what made her such a monster, pretending to have heard what she might have expected her son to say instead. She set a small bottle of liquid on the table, an eyedropper lid screwed into the top.

Andrew felt he could have drunk the whole thing off then and there and had no really strong objection to the result. But that would only be leaving someone else to finish what he’d started. This whole damn disaster was his doing, his responsibility. Responsibility. That was what his life was reduced to. Responsibility to boot and responsibility in over plus. A father, after all, must be a man. He hasn’t the right to kill himself.

****

Giles opened the door before Buffy could even ring the bell. “Thank God you’re here!” he declared breathlessly. He looked worse than she’d ever seen him, worse than last night, worse even than the time she had found him on his living room floor slumped over a bottle, wallowing in self-pity over Jenny’s possession by Eyghon. Now, as then, he had been drinking heavily and had not changed his clothes from the night before. His filthy oxford shirt hung open over his relatively less filthy T-shirt. His grimy face was covered with stubble. Beneath the strong aroma of alcohol, he stank of sweat and soot and just the faintest hint of dried semen. But when he rushed to put his arms around Buffy and usher her into his home, her heart leapt in spite of all that with a dizzy, undeniable excitement that frightened and confused her, without making her want it to stop. 

“I haven’t slept a wink,” he informed her earnestly, his eyes shining madly. He steered her to the sofa, and they sat. She made sure to put about eighteen inches of space between them even though it made her feel silly. As if he were some _guy_ with whom she had to be concerned about her sexual safety or social etiquette! As if this were some kind of ‘date’!

“I didn’t sleep well either,” she said, mostly to fill the silence. Her heart was hammering. She was almost sure he could hear it. She glanced self-consciously down at her breasts, wishing she’d worn something a little less revealing, she’d just been too distracted this morning to think about what this moment might be like. Her skirt was a little short for that matter, showing a little too much thigh. She looked up to find that Giles’ eyes had followed her gaze. They both blushed, averting their eyes. Giles shifted uncomfortably and made an elaborate throat clearing noise, trying by sheer force of embarrassment to overcome his sudden partial erection.

He looked back at her face again, miserably, longingly. Somehow the space between them had been reduced to six inches. It was much too close. They would each have had to shift only a little for their thighs to touch. His brain, already clouded by alcohol and lack of sleep, was now having to make do with less blood, less oxygen. “God, I want to—!” he broke off his impulsive exclamation in mid-sentence, breaking eye contact again.

“Kiss me?” Buffy guessed with guilty desire.

“For a start!” he admitted, reaching for her hand. Which was in her lap. Resting on her thigh. Which was where his hand ended up. Because, her hand was gone. It was on his shoulder, pulling him towards her. His other hand, the one that wasn’t feeling its way up Buffy’s inner thigh, found her breast. He squeezed it, thumbing her hard nipple through the ribbed cotton of her tank top. Why had she chosen not to wear a bra? Had she come here wanting to have sex again? Was this all some elaborate plan?

Suddenly they _were_ kissing. Had he kissed her or had she kissed him? It didn’t matter. They had to stop. He slid both his hands under her clothes, groping her bush through her panties and her breasts directly, skin to skin. He moved his kiss downward, along the curve of her jaw to her neck. She bit his earlobe, sucking it into her mouth. They had to stop now. His fingers wriggled up through a leg hole and into her panties, stretching and tearing the seam just a little bit. Her coarse hairs were damp under the sensitive pads of his fingers. She spread her legs wider. The seam of her panties ripped wider as his whole hand was thrust inside them. He’d be stopping any second now.

Her hands were on his back. She slid them lower, inside his pants, inside his shorts and grabbed his functionally bare ass. Any second now. He slid his first two fingers deep inside Buffy’s cunt, rubbing her lips against her clit with his thumb. Her internal musculature squeezed his fingers in a friendly, eager, welcoming way as they stroked her and wriggled inside her.His erection was less and less partial, blood to the brain less and less his heart’s priority. He shifted forward, trying to lay Buffy down, to climb on top of her. It was an awkward maneuver on the narrow couch, bounded as it was on one side by its high, stiff back. 

The worst of many good reasons why they didn’t just move to the much more comfortable bed upstairs, hit him like a fifty gallon drum of ice water, sobering and deflating him, boosting his IQ by about two standard deviations. With an anguished sigh, Giles sat up, disentangling himself from Buffy. 

“Hey!” she objected as his hand abandoned her pussy, leaving it empty and in need, then shifting in mid objection, “What are you doing?”

“What am _I_ doing?” he countered, suddenly feeling a bit resentful. “The same thing you were doing, apparently!”

“Well stop it!” she scolded.

“I _have_!” he pointed out. “Just you remember to keep your... your... hands to yourself, and I think we’ll be alright!

“ _My_ hands?” Buffy shouted back. “Gee, it kinda felt like you were the one fingering _me_ just now!”

“Well, you stuck your hands down my pants!” Giles shouted back, “And for God’s sake, woman! What’s the idea of coming over here half dressed? After last night, you ought to know how weak I am!”

Buffy favored him with a guilty almost-sort-of-smile. “I really ought to, shouldn’t I,” she admitted sheepishly. They both let themselves laugh at little at each other and at themselves.

Giles got to his feet, pacing, running his hands through his hair, uncomfortably realizing that he was adding Buffy’s vaginal juices to the long list of things he needed to wash out of it already.“Bloody Hell,” he murmured. “What are we going to do about this? This can’t—We can’t—I can’t—Sex is not a normal, healthy part of a Slayer/Watcher relationship.”

“I know that!” Buffy acknowledged, a little defensively. “It’s—It was— a mistake. We just have to... not do it anymore.”

“Yes,” Giles agreed eagerly. He sat in a chair, facing the couch at what he hoped was a safe distance. “A mistake.”


	2. Plan B

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "To everything there is a season," but when life happens at the wrong moment, sometimes you need a back up plan.

Somehow or other, Giles glasses had gotten into his hands and he was cleaning them frantically. “Buffy, let me come to the point,” he said, putting them back on and forcing himself to look Buffy in the eye, “before I lose my nerve. About... last night:I don’t really know how to ask you this, but you haven’t... told anyone, have you? That we... made love last night?”

Now it was Buffy’s turn to look pointedly away, and not _just_ because of what the answer to his question was. She also wasn’t sure that ‘making love’ was exactly the word for 99.44% foreplay free,arson adjacent,parking lot sex that made you feel like you were being turned inside out. As much as her body ached for a repeat performance, especially now that they’d gone back and filled in a little more of the foreplay, she still wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about any of it. “Willow knows,” she admitted finally, gazing with apparent interest at her nail polish. “But, I swear to you,” she continued, trying harder to maintain eye contact, “I won’t tell anyone else and neither will she. I won’t even tell her about... what we were doing just now.”

“Well,” Giles responded, unable to keep a slightly corrective note out of his voice, “I wish you hadn’t told anyone at all, about any of it. But I suppose you have to confide in someone, and I have every confidence that Willow can be trusted. If anyone can. “Look, Buffy,” he went on, sounding less pedantic, though no less strained, “I feel like a horrible old bastard asking you to keep a secret like this. Unfortunately, the State of California, not to mention the INS, takes this erm... sort of thing fairly seriously.”

“This sort of thing,” Buffy repeated quietly, not much liking the sound of it. The ‘sort of thing’ he meant was statutory rape. It struck her for the first time that the structure of that legalism was a little off. If forcible rape meant being violated by force,wouldn’t statutory rape mean being violated by a statute?

Giles sighed heavily, “I am a horrible old bastard, by the way,” he informed her with a small, sad smile, “just so you know.”

Buffy laughed nervously, not sure if he was joking, then stopped abruptly, her stomach flip-flopping at the thought of what she had to say next. Swallowing hard, she charged the elephant head on. “Giles,” she said, resolutely, “there’ s one other thing we need to talk about.”

“At least,” he agreed, smiling nervously, “but please, go on.” He waited for her to speak with a look of steady, patient attention.

Buffy felt suddenly shy, foolish, out of her depth. “What do you know about, birth control and... stuff like that,”she blurted out, becoming red in the face. “Because I’m not, you know, on the Pill or anything, and I sort of couldn’t help but notice that I ended up with about a gallon of your cum inside me when we were, you know, doing it, last night, and I’m hoping it’s not too late to, you know, _do_ something about that.”

“Oh good lord!” Giles nearly choked.

“Hey, yeah, no,” Buffy stammered, coloring even more deeply, “It’s a stu—stupid question. Forget I mentioned it. I’ll just... We’ll figure it out.”

“No, Buffy,” Giles assured her. “It’s not stupid at all. Just the opposite,”He did wish she would quit torturing him by putting so fine a point on the fact that his penis had quite recently been inside her vagina but he didn’t want to call yet more attention to the fact by saying so, especially since he’d just had his fingers in the same tight slot _and_ they’d already had to have a chat about _that_ as well. “I just feel such a fool for not thinking of this...erm... potentiality before now,” he plowed on earnestly, concentrating on the business in hand.“All of this just seems so...unreal.” He paused a moment, brows knitted. “Hold on a minute,” he said, “If I’m to ‘forget’ you mentioned it, then who’s the ‘we’ who’re going to figure this out?”

“Me and Willow?” Buffy reluctantly admitted, making a pained face. “She’s... doing a little research. I just thought if you already know, we wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel.”

“Well, I have to confess,” Giles murmured, taking off his glasses and peering at the tiny screws in the frames, as if wondering if they could perhaps be better adjusted. “I’m not quite sure. I haven’t been in any... sudden or serious danger of getting anyone pregnant since...” Buffy gave him a look that said she really, really didn’t want to know. “Well... for many years now,” he concluded.

“So,” Buffy interpreted, rankled, “you don’t know anything relevant to, you know, modern times.”That got a look of mild exasperation from Giles in return. The display of mutual annoyance between them felt comfortingly familiar.

“I’ve heard of emergency contraceptives, of course,” he acknowledged. “But I don’t really know what the availability is over here. I’m sure it’s not as easy as popping into the corner chemist shop. Nothing ever is in this... puritan country.” They looked at each other miserably for another long moment. He longed to hold her hand, to comfort and reassure her. But the last time he’d reached for her hand his fingers had ended up in her cunt. “I’m not sure how I feel about... getting Willow... mixed up in this... erm... ‘research project’,” he murmured guiltily at last.

“Well... she offered,” Buffy pointed out. “And it’s just research. This... thing between us may be pathological, but I’m pretty sure it’s not contagious.”

 ****

Willow shut off her laptop, lay back on her bed among dozens of scattered books and journals and sighed. After five hours of wading through scores of articles and treatises she had a lot of information, but few answers. She had learned that there was a veritable cornucopia of emergency contraceptive products on the market in Europe, but in the United States pharmacies weren’t allowed to carry anything designed and labeled for that use lest the adolescent female population get wind of it and disport themselves without restraint. A doctor was needed to examine the patient and write a prescription. That would have meant telling _Joyce_ that Buffy had just had yet more sex, not to mention the difficulty of being seen on a weekend.

Of course, with two doctors in the house, Willow knew that she could get her hands on a prescription pad. And it was clear from what she had read that the active ingredients were the same as in regular birth control pills, that different dosages of the same pills were sometimes used for both purposes even. The problem was, there were dozens of different formulations on the market and dozens of different names for the same formulations. It would take Willow a week to learn enough about the subject to know how to prescribe a safe and effective dose of exactly what. Buffy didn’t have a week. Whatever kind of pills you took had to be taken within 72 hours after ejaculation. 48 hours was better. As soon as possible was best. Buffy had been walking around with Giles’s semen inside her for nearly 18 hours.

Willow clamped down hard on her imagination trying to suppress the image of Giles sliding his huge throbbing man parts into Buffy’s drippy-wet girly parts, both of them moaning in an agony of desire seeking and finding satisfaction. Though Buffy hadn’t specified exactly, she pictured his penis as being _both_ very long _and_ very big around. Her legs must have been spread open wide enough for him to fit his hips between them so that he could get his hard cock close enough to thrust into her. Had she spread them wide herself, before he mounted her, so that he could look down at her passion pink lips, beckoning him, inviting him in? Or had he pushed them apart with his hands, his thighs, his monster cock itself, pressing his way into her as she lay back, unresisting, submitting to his will. Willow resisted rubbing herself again. She’d done enough of that thinking about this disaster already. She needed her brains washed out with soap she scolded herself.

Willow checked the clock again. The afternoon was slipping away like a false lover into the night. She wished Buffy would hurry up and come already. The Doorbell rang. It was Buffy. “I wish I had a million dollars(!)” she mumbled to herself and opened up her door.

“Well?”asked Buffy anxiously, “did you find anything?” She kept shifting uncomfortable, as if there were some wriggly little thing crawling beneath her skirt. There was an odor about her that said she had been indulging in a little daytime sewer hunting, a good strategy for temporary stress relief, if you didn’t mind the high risk of being permanently killed.

Willow tried, unsuccessfully, to smile. “I’m making progress,” she said, “but time is ticking. Apparently, you can use regular birth control pills, but I’m still working on how much of what kind.”

“Wow,” Buffy said, “good work.” Then, worriedly, she added, “What kind of time do we have?”

“72 hours after sex,” said Willow. “Which is now 52hours. That’s just the most time we might have though. Some studies say 48 hours.”

“Which really means 28,” Buffy murmured, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, biting it gently. Willow couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was about this small act of distress that she found so... embarrassing.

“We have to get help,” she pleaded, “Even if I steal my dad’s prescription pad, I don’t think I can figure out what to write by tomorrow night.”

Buffy was touched by Willow’s willingness to help her un-screw-up her life, so to speak, even to the point of breaking the law and risking getting in trouble with her dad. “We’ll figure it out,” she found herself trying to reassure her friend. “You already know more than Giles.”Suddenly, Buffy and Willow stopped and looked into each other’s eyes. “We should call Giles,” Buffy said aloud. Willow nodded, reaching for the phone next to the couch, only to be stopped by the sound of a key turning in the door. “... From my house,” Buffy amended. Willow nodded again. It was the obvious solution. Giles could stroll right up to a doctor or pharmacist and casually ask for unscrewing advice, because men his age were supposed to be sexually active.

But the short, bespectacled man coming through the front door made it hard for them to put their brilliant plan into action. “How is my dear Willow this fine, sunny Sabbath day?”Willows father boomed. Ira Rosenberg was as friendly and effervescent as his wife was distant and abstracted. He ran to his daughter and caught her in a big bear hug that, to Buffy’s eye, seem to last a fraction of a minute too long, to be by some few centimeters too tight, too intimate. But then, she scolded herself, not every girl had to have a distant, complicated and borderline screwed up relationship with her father. Maybe this was what real fatherly affection looked like.

“I’m great, Dad,” Willow beamed back at him, actually blushing. Knowing that Dr. Rosenberg rarely made it home before 10pm, even on a Saturday and that Willow often wished desperately that he would, Buffy tried to be unobtrusive, to let them have their moment. It was not to be.

Although this was their first meeting, beyond a glimpse or two in the school parking lot, Ira jumped right in to a conversation with Buffy, apparently already in progress. “Is it a sin?” he asked in a loud, jovial voice, “to do the Lord’s work on the Lord’s day?”

“Umm...” said Buffy, sneaking a look at Willow for guidance on how to react. “I...wouldn’t think so?” Ira spent the next ten minutes railing against the rigidity of Sunnydale’s latest earnest young cleric ‘Rabbi Mike’, who evidently was pressuring him to cut back to a six day work week. She had never met anyone in all her life who could complain or argue (she honestly wasn’t sure which he was doing) so cheerfully. He seemed positively gleeful.

Buffy was trying to do the polite thing and keep up with what he was saying, but all she could think about, besides the swimming tournament in her fallopian tubes, was how desperately she wished she could reach inside her skirt and pull up her torn panties, which had slipped down yet again, leaving one side of her butt half sticking out under her short skirt. She halfway wished she had just taken them off when she was alone in the sewer earlier. But with a skirt this short, there was just too much risk of someone seeing something they weren’t supposed to.

She’d been half tempted to see if she could trade both the skirt and the underpants for a pair of Giles’ boxers, if he had any, but considering how hot and heavy things had gotten when she’d brought up the subject of kissing, she wasn’t about to try and see how well ‘boxers or briefs’ worked as a conversation starter. She also wasn’t too keen on reminding him that he had just torn her underpants halfway off while masturbating her to the point of acute sexual frustration. She certainly wasn’t about to ask him if he minded showing her where his bedroom was so that she could take her own clothes off and put his on, sheathing her damp pussy in the same fabric that normally caressed his cock and balls. Especially since that was the room where her boyfriend— _ex_ -boyfriend damn it!—had raped his girlfriend’s corpse the night before.

Buffy tried to respond in a noncommittal yet encouraging way to everything Ira was saying even though she’d lost the thread of it about a mile back. The look he was giving her, when his eyes weren’t crawling all over her breasts, said she wasn’t quite satisfying him as a conversationalist.

“Dad,” said Willow, apparently coming to her rescue, “Buffy was just telling me how much she admires the neoclassical bronzes in the foyer.”

Buffy did a mental doubled take. What the hell kind of a bail was that? Willow’s father was looking at her expectantly. At her face even. Admittedly, she knew more about art than religion, but _still_. She didn’t especially want to have a conversation with some middle aged horndog about her supposed admiration of tiny statues of nude men. Especially since she’d just accidentally shifted his attention from both her face and her breasts with the automatic fidgeting of her pelvis inside her torn panties.  She felt furious that Willow’s _father_ could look at her like that, could think about doing the things he was obviously thinking about doing to her. But then she felt a weird sense of guilt for judging him about it. He was a guy, she guessed, even if he did also happen to be Willow’s father. He wasn’t any older than Giles. Buffy’s world was suddenly uncomfortably full of guys. “The forms are so... kinetic,”she managed,when an asteroid didn’t fall on her head obviating the need to say _something_. She sort of remembered that at least one of the figures had been engaged in some vaguely athletic sort of activity, or at least he was brandishing a big ass javelin.

“Well, then,” said Dr. Rosenberg brightly, “If that’s the kind of thing you like, you should see the ones in my study.”

“What a great idea!” Willow enthused, seeming not to notice the I-wish-I-had-X-ray-vision way that Ira was looking at the front of Buffy’s skirt. “Let’s go look at them right now!”

“Sounds like fun,”Buffy agreed weakly, forcing a smile. Clearly this had something to do with Willow’s plans to lay her hands on her father’s prescription pad. In the service of that endeavor, Buffy managed to keep Ira engaged in a steady stream of very small talk about some fairly small statues for what seemed like at least an hour while successfully avoiding any mention of their tiny exposed bronze genitals. Ira had tried an experimental pun or two about the javelin, but Buffy had played dumb and he’d stopped when he saw that he wasn’t going to get any encouragement.

Finally, Willow emerged from somewhere outside her father’s line of sight saying, “Buffy, I think we’d better get going. The movie starts at 5:45. We don’t want to be late.”

“Oh,” said Ira excitedly, “you mean that new sci-fi flick over at the Sun Cinema? I’ve been dying to see that! We’ll all go, my treat!”

“Actually,” Buffy apologized, “It’s that new romantic comedy over at the Mall Twin.”

“Ah, yes,” Ira boomed,“I’ve been meaning to see that too. It’s the one with the girl and the guy,” he grinned,winking at Buffy, “who get into a situation in a place and then do _things_.”

“The very one,” Buffy confirmed grimly. She was beginning to have a disturbingly clear sense of what (or who) Willow saw in Xander. Of course, Buffy realized, with genuine if bleak amusement, she had no room to judge anyone on the issue of all things Freudian. She let herself laugh a little, let Willow and her dad think she was laughing with them.

“My _treat and_ I’ll buy you girls dinner,” said Dr. Rosenberg, “that’s my final offer.”

Buffy had just opened her mouth, uncertain as yet what excuse was about to come out of it, when she heard Willow say, “Thanks Dad, that’s a great idea. Buffy, isn’t that a great idea?” The look in Willow’s eyes said, _just go with it, I’ll explain later_. She hoped to God there was a good reason for this little field trip having to do with an actual anti-pregnancy plan.

“Willow?” Ira said, looking suddenly troubled. For a moment both girls’ hearts stopped, thinking they were somehow busted. “Why don’t you get your friend a sweater.” To Buffy he added with apologetic embarrassment, “You look... cold.”

Buffy crossed her arms over her breasts, and started towards the stairs, relieved that, at least, she might have the chance to get Willow alone for a minute and get the scoop on what she was supposed to be gaining by letting Ira Rosenberg take her out for dinner and a movie. Maybe there would even be an opportunity to change into a more functional pair of under wear. It was not to be. “Here you go, Buffy,” Willow said, pulling a lime green monstrosity out of the coat closet by the front door.

“I’m not sure that quite goes—” Buffy started to object, but Ira cut her off in mid-sentence. She was honestly having trouble imagining Sheila Rosenberg, legendary local feminnazi, putting up with this guy for what had clearly been well over eighteen years. Maybe by ignoring him completely? Sharing space like roommates? _"They don’t even bicker,"_ Willow had said, _“sometimes they glare.”_ It was hard to imagine not having any more conflict than that in an actual ongoing relationship.

“It’ll do,” he said. “If you girls get lost in Willow’s closet you may never find your way out again. We’re bound to miss the previews as it is.”

****

London, UK, March 15, 1925

Helena’s stomach lurched. Blood. She was shocked at the sight of it. Logic, simple basic arithmetic as applied to biology told her she should have expected it, and yet she had not. She was horrified. Because she bled, she wept.

Nothing. It was all for nothing. She was nothing. Not a virgin, not a mother, not even a whore. Nothing. A victim consecrated to nothing. A thoughtless, vain sacrifice to Peter’s lust and petulance.

Suddenly, Helena laughed, a high sharp brittle sound, like glass breaking. She had honestly thought, she suddenly realized, had seriously _believed_ , that something as horrible as rape could only have happened to _her_ for a REASON! _Still_ , at twenty-five years of age no less, even as she had lain on the floor of Peter’s storeroom, battered and weeping and cursing and begging him to let her up, even as he had mercilessly forced his painfully hard and inflexible member into her dry, disgusted, unprepared orifice, even as she had walked home, numb, lost, friendless, she had been a _child_ , believing in rainbows and unicorns!

Helena laughed and was a child no more. Her womb was not empty after all. Vengeance coiled and hissed inside her, a living thing, a thing she would bring forth into the world. ‘To everything there is a season,’ so it was written, ‘And a time to every purpose under heaven.’ Math and biology posing as mysticism; mysticism posing as logic. Helena ceased to weep. She bled for seven days and for seven more she waited, preparing for a time of War.

 


	3. Other Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel has an idea for keeping Buffy too busy to get her hands on the morning after pill. Because he has a sick sense of humor, that's why.

Predictably, when they got to the mall, there was some confusion over the fact that there was no 5:45 showing for the chick flick de jure. Buffy died a little as the good doctor cheerfully purchased three tickets for the next showing at 7:15. She did not have time for this. She could practically feel herself ovulating. Plus Ira had filled the short drive over with plausibly deniable sex puns aimed squarely in her direction, and she wasn’t about to spend the next two hours playing musical chairs in a dark theater to try to keep Willow in between them. Finally, she managed to drag Willow away to the ladies room, enduring the inevitable bevy of jokes about the female habit of going to the bathroom in pairs, with a little too much leering lesbian subtext considering one of the two girls was his daughter. The moment she was sure they were alone, Buffy locked the door, turned to Willow and said: “Okay, so tell me how this is all part of some amazingly brilliant plan to keep me from getting knocked up.”

“Well,” said Willow, shifting uncomfortably, “I got the prescription pad, but I need a little time to trace my dad’s signature from the indention in the paper.”

Buffy tried to suppress her annoyance, to give her friend the benefit of the doubt. “And we aren’t at my house, right now, doing that because... why exactly?” she asked.

“It’s easier to do when you have the whole pad, not just one sheet,” Willow explained. “The groves are deeper.”

“And?” Buffy demanded skeptically.

“I know my dad,” Willow argued. “If he’s alone in the house too long, he’ll start _organizing_ things. If the prescription pad is missing, he won’t rest until he finds it. This way, I can keep him busy until I’m ready to put it back.”

Buffy had to admit that this made a degree of sense, but she was still convinced that more than half of the reason they were here was because Willow could not pass up the chance to spend time with her father, even if she had to spend it pretending that he wasn’t pretending that he was there on a date with Buffy. “Okay,” she said, thinking fast, “Here’s the plan. You go ahead and get started on the signature. Your Dad will start to wonder why we’re taking so long, but that’s fine, because as soon as we’ve got that done, we can go back and tell him I’m sick, and you guys can take me home. You go on to the movie with your dad, and I’ll call Giles and tell him to get his ass in gear on the whole dosage issue, got it?”

Three feet above their heads, concealed behind a thin layer of ceiling panels, Angel smiled like a shark, eyes and teeth glittering in the semi-darkness glad he’d decided to track Buffy from the sewer himself instead of sending a minion to do it. His smile got broader with every word of confirmation that Buffy and Giles had indeed committed that most unoriginal of sins, the sin of imprudent fucking. “I mean, my life isn’t complicated enough with my murdering vampire ex-boyfriend telling my _mom_ every last detail of how I lost my virginity?” Buffy railed, fidgeting giving way to pacing, which led to unconscious adjustment of her underpants the way a girl would only do when she thought she was alone. “No, I have to go and make things _really_ interesting by sleeping with my Watcher! I means he’s like, ‘leave me alone and let me go kill myself’ and I’m like, ‘no, I have a better idea lets fuck in a fucking parking lot like a couple of animals so I can prove how much I don’t want you to die!’ Now there’s a brilliant frigging decision making process. I just want to cross stitch _that_ story on a little pillow to put in the frigging nursery!”

This was just too much. He never ceased to delight in the depths of human depravity or in the intimate association between loving someone and making them miserable. Thinking of the pompous, self-consciously ‘good’ Rupert Giles, with his well-meaning notions of duty and honor, pluming those depths and inflicting such sweet misery was deliciously amusing. It was even funnier given that dear, sweet Jenny Calendar, the damned gypsy bitch that Giles had been panting after for nearly a year, had been dead less than 24 hours. Their fumbling, bumbling, never to be consummated romance had been a comedy of errors that, even with the hindrance of a feeling human soul, Angel had been fully able to appreciate. Now her body lay cold and naked, broken and violated in a drawer in the basement morgue of Sunnydale General. After all that yearning and burning, after so much maudlin, self-indulgent agonizing about love and betrayal, after his suicidally stupid tantrum at the factory last night; that the great, dignified Watcher couldn’t keep his cock in his pants long enough to get his ‘one true love’ in the ground was abso-fucking-lutely hilarious.

As Buffy continued her soliloquy Angel made a mental note to have a conversation with Giles in the very near future so that he could let him know exactly how Jenny and Buffy compared, sexually speaking. The Watcher had definitely had the better of the two fucks, even taking into account the inherent disadvantage of being stone dead as a quality in a lover. Buffy was younger, tighter, and he could just tell that she had more creativity and enthusiasm than Jenny had ever had, dead or alive, not to mention the muscle tone of a Slayer, inside and out. Giles was really very lucky that Angel had taken the lesser lover off his hands. He was practically getting a hard-on thinking of what it would be like to explain that to him detail by warm, sticky detail.

“Which you’d think, at least, being a sophisticated man or the world or whatever, Giles would know a little more than us about how to not get pregnant,” Buffy was complaining. “I mean especially if it’s as simple as taking extra birth control pills. He lived through the sixties or whatever. How can he not know this stuff?”

“He’s a guy,” Willow pointed out distractedly, not looking up from her work. “This is girl stuff.”

“Yeah,” said Buffy, “but why is that exactly? I mean, I’m pretty sure he was fucking me the whole time I was fucking him, right? I mean, these are his sperm we’re trying to neutralize or whatever. And he sure as hell doesn’t want to be breaking out the tweed diapers any more than I do. So why is it _my_ job to fix this and not his?”

On another level, Angel was also angry. The part of him that still was and would always be the fleshly descendant of a tree dwelling primate wanted to hang that meddling librarian up by his ball sac and _explain_ to him in excruciating detail that Buffy was not his cunt to fuck. But, one advantage of being a soulless monster was that Angel truly _enjoyed_ being angry. It was nice to actually have something _against_ a potential victim. It made the whole process of anticipating, planning and consummating violence against them so much more meaningful. Yes, very soon he was going to have a confrontation with Mr. Rupert S. Giles, after which he could spend the rest of eternity comparing notes with the lovely Ms. Calendar about the abuse and violation of their various organs and orifices.

Right now, however, Angel was getting stoked up for his imminent confrontation with Buffy. Her wanton fornication had created an opportunity for him to hurt and damage her in intimate and lasting ways. If he got to punish her new paramour in the process, that was just a bonus. The dumb bitch didn’t even know how much danger she was in of actually conceiving her Watcher’s spawn. After more than a year of obsessing over the girl, Angel knew the rhythms of her body better than she did. He was aware of her heartbeat, her body temperature, every drop of blood that she had ever shed. He also remembered a world she had no inkling of, a world in which men and women lived in dread of procreative forces they could barely understand, let alone control. If he’d had to make book on Buffy getting pregnant based on his knowledge of those processes and the perversity of fate, he’d have bet even money, even if ‘never again’ didn’t turn into ‘just once more’, the way it so often did. Besides, he wouldn’t mind causing her a few weeks of anxiety over the prospect of getting knocked up even if it didn’t pan out.

It was clear to Angel that his enemy was racing against time. All he had to do to hurt her was to slow her down. As usual, he knew just what to do to keep Buffy too busy to make other plans. Silently, he crept along the ceiling beams to hang like a bat inside into the space above the adjoining men’s restroom and peer down through a gap in the panels less than an inch wide. Minutes ticked by. His unseen expression had become more serious. For his plan to work, he needed a victim to come along before Buffy and Willow finished _their_ work. He didn’t dare strike in the lobby, or in the Mall proper, where the last rays of the setting sun still streamed through the skylights. Even indirect rays, though unlikely to kill a vampire, tended to sap his strength pretty quickly. In a fight with Buffy, that would amount to the same thing.

Not for the first time, Angel wished he had Spike’s high tolerance to sunlight. That yellow haired bastard could soak up indirect rays like they were moonbeams. He knew it too, the arrogant little cocksucker. Even with his useless scorched and twisted legs, even with his new spinal problems, despite his recent object lesson in the form of a cock up the ass, Spike still though he was Angel’s better. He’d forgotten his place in the pecking order while Angel had been away. Drusilla had never been a good disciplinarian despite her flare for bondage, torture, choreographed proxy rape and other such sex play. She had let her spawn act the part of her sire for too long. He’d even had the balls to question Angel’s priorities in focusing the group’s energies on the systematic destruction of Buffy Summers, especially when he had decided, totally of his own free will, not to rape her for Valentine’s Day after all, to take a wider circle and come back to that little treat after a longer period of anticipation. Spike had actually implied that he, Angelus, had taken pity on the Slayer, that he was less than a monster, less even that a man because he had spent these last few weeks feasting on her incrementally increasing suffering rather than simply tackling her at the first clear chance and fucking her immediately before, during or after ripping her throat out. Cretin.

Well, Daddy really was home now. He had set himself a goal of completely breaking Buffy before he killed her and that was what he meant to do. He would just have to keep forcibly reminding Spike who was on top until he got it through his thick, peroxided scalp that he was the bitch, not the master.

Angel was tired of waiting. He needed to consummate his plan for tormenting Buffy right now. He was getting just about desperate enough to snatch Willow through the ceiling of the ladies’ room. Actually, he was starting to warm up to the idea, despite the risks. After all, there were few people in the world whose pain would be more piercing to Buffy. Besides, who could ever get tired of defiling weeping virgins.

Then, miraculously, like the son of Abraham before her, Willow Rosenberg was spared by the sudden appearance of a fat, hapless he goat. Or was she? A broad grin split Angel’s face once more. This was too good to be true. The poor innocent fool who had stumbled across his path was none other than Willow’s father, Dr. Ira Rosenberg. It was the same crime only better. This way Buffy wouldn’t have to imagine Willow’s suffering, she could live with it first hand, the way she was living with Rupert’s deep, albeit twisted mourning for Jenny.

Angel waited until Ira Rosenberg was as far off his guard as a man could be short of coming. He stood there, certain he was alone, dick in hand, blissfully pissing his way to relief. Suddenly, Angel dove through the ceiling in full vamp face, lunging directly at the side of Rosenberg’s head, at an angle calculated to produce maximum terror. His efforts were rewarded with a satisfying scream, sure to bring Buffy, Willow and half the theater running. Collapsing atop his prey, Angel sank in his fangs and quickly slurped down at least a pint of blood.

Ira’s frightened heartbeat, his warm body, his ardent but feeble struggling to break free, filled Angel with a joyful longing that was both lust and hunger yet somehow also akin to love. He grabbed Ira by the balls, twisting and squeezing, enjoying his pain and his confusion. Angel’s cock was hard and drooling. For one delightful moment he imagined the joy it would give him to penetrate and humiliate this man knowing the shame it would bring to his offspring, the horror and disgust Buffy would be forced to feel on her behalf. Angel had to remind himself not to get too distracted, not to surrender too much to the moment. The Slayer was coming. By his own art he was forcing her to come. And when she came, he would leave her no choice about what happened next.

Jumping to his feet, Angel jerked Ira up by the collar, thrust him through the hole in the ceiling and leapt up after him. In the wink of a lamb’s tail, he heard Buffy and Willow burst through the bathroom door, forcing entry against the objections of a security guard, who shouted and cursed in protest invoking the bans of law and decency to demand that they withdraw from this most private place of men. Deaf to his cries, they moved further inside that small, shit stinking chamber. Not daring to waist another moment listening to the commotion below, Angel herded Ira before him like a dog nipping at the heels of a frightened sheep, making for the duct system that would lead them down to the basement where they could disappear into the sewers.

Ira was desperate to escape. He was acutely aware of his pants falling around his ankles and the pain in his battered testicles, which gave him a horrific but graspable handle for what was happening to him. Praying to God to deliver him, he leapt with all his weight and all his faith onto a soft expanse of ceiling panels between two beams. But for the intervention of Angel’s superhuman reflexes, he would have fallen free to the lobby. The demon lunged and grabbed his prey with both hands, nearly falling through the ceiling himself. “Nice try Rosenberg,” he snarled as he regained his balance. “Just for that,” he fumed, pausing to take another quick drink, “I’m not going to kill you all the way. I’m going to leave you for Buffy.”

 


	4. The Opposite of Sex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Talking about it isn't helping; We may as well try some violence(!)"  
> ~Willow Rosenberg

As Buffy scuttled nimbly along the beams inside the ceiling of the Mall Twin, she was focused, energized, fueled by cold hatred that left no room for anger, fear or uncertainty. Angel had to be stopped. Dr. Rosenberg had to be saved, but most importantly, Angel had to die. Suddenly, she heard scuffling and snarling only a few yards away. The darkness ahead of her got a little lighter. No more than twenty feet in front of her Angel and Dr. Rosenberg were silhouetted by the dim glow of a hole where they had nearly fallen through to the lobby. Angel was biting Dr. Rosenberg savagely on the side of the head, punishing him, she supposed for his near escape. During the quarter minute or so that Angel stopped to savage Willow’s father, Buffy closed most of the distance between them, but she was still not within lunging distance in these tight quarters when the undead bastard scrambled across the gap, dragging his wailing hostage after him.

Buffy stopped short. At five foot almost two, she could not simply lie across the hole and grab the beams on the other side as Angel had done, and she had no room to build momentum to leap over it. Instead, she hung from a rafter and swung across, losing nearly half a minute and those goddamned underpants in the process. She could imagine what someone would think seeing them flutter down like a little white dove to the floor below, but this was certainly no time to worry about her reputation.

Now more than thirty feet away, Angel and his victim disappeared into the once again deepening darkness of the crawl space. Buffy rounded a corner, more than half expecting to be ambushed but they were gone. She made a noise of rage and frustration between a grunt and a scream. They seemed to have literally disappeared. Then, Buffy glimpsed the metal air duct in the near darkness. She looked cautiously into the opening and felt more than saw that the shaft was completely vertical and very, very deep. It must lead to the basement and thence the sewer. The duct was so narrow that anyone moving through it would have their arms pinned to their sides until they almost fully emerged, like an infant being born. Or a fetus at an abortion clinic. Going down that shaft knowing that Angel lay in wait below would be little short of suicide.

No time to find a more appropriate entrance, Buffy ripped her way through the ceiling, and swung herself down into the midst of an astonished crowd, every single one of whom could see her bare bush. “Hey!” a ten-or-twelve-year-old boy shouted in awe and rapture, “That girl’s not wearing any underpants!” There was an excited murmur in which disapproval was but one prominent note. Pushing her way through the throng, ignoring at least one opportunistic hand up her skirt Buffy headed for the elevator. She glimpsed Willow across the cavernous room, screaming and crying hysterically, her hair falling down in her face, her clothes becoming disheveled as she struggled in vain to free herself from two beefy, red faced mall cops. There was no time to render aid. Buffy had to prioritize. The mall cops probably weren’t killers, even in Sunnydale. Angel was.

Buffy caught an almost empty elevator, physically tossing it’s one passenger out on his butt and descended into the basement like Hercules into the underworld. Once again, she was prepared to step into an ambush, but the basement was deserted. Buffy spied a pile of crates roughly flung against one wall, their contents spilled, broken and smeared with blood. Shoving them aside, she found a loose grate and lifted it up. A thin trail of fresh blood mingled with the sewage down the tunnel leading to her left. Buffy followed it without hesitation. Adrenaline was rushing through her veins as her heart pumped almost double time. They were close. She could feel it. Running as fast as she dared in the perpetual slickness of the massive drain pipe, Buffy skidded around a corner. And literally ran into Spike.

“Oh, Slayer!” he cried out as she trod on his useless legs, “Please, please, don’t hurt me!”

“What the fuck?” Said Buffy stunned, confused.

“No, sod it,” he spat, scrambling into a sitting position against the wall, “just kill me already, make it quick.”

A thousand questions bubbled through Buffy’s brain, questions like ‘Is he still part of Angel’s crew?’ and ‘Oh my God is _Spike_ looking up my skirt?’ But the first to pop out of her mouth was, “Where’s your wheel chair?”

“Bastard took it, din’ he,” said Spike bitterly, “along with that fucking bitch and every other bloody thing that used to be mine.”This degraded,helpless creature was so pitiful that Buffy almost literally pitied him. But she knew pity was wasted on vampires, alien to them. And she did _not_ have time. Plus, she was pretty sure he _was_ looking up her skirt, and could see everything.

“Spike,” she demanded, “Where’s Angel? Which way did they go?”

Spike flashed a nasty smile at Buffy, a half second sooner than he should have. Spinning on her heels, she blocked the heavy iron bar that Angel was swinging at her head, catching it in both hands. The metal slammed into her palms so hard it made the tiny bones in her wrists vibrate, but Buffy held on and immediately began using the bar to push Angel back. Suddenly, in one smooth motion, Angel released the bar and ducked under it so that Buffy flew forward into him and he was able to catch her around the waist and roll on top of her, his face rubbing wetly against her chest in a way that made her glad to be wearing a sweater and that her skirt had landed in such a way that he probably hadn’t yet tumbled to the fact that she was pinned beneath him sans underwear.

“Hello, lover!” he laughed with brutal joy, “you like to get your hands on my rod, don’t you?”

Buffy head-butted Angel in the face and threw him backwards into Spike, who had been lolling against the wall of the tunnel with a smirk on his face watching the show. “Watch it you bloody Poofter!” Spike snarled, scuttling backwards. The smirk was gone, but he still seemed content to watch from the sidelines. Leaping forward, maintaining the initiative, Buffy planted her knees in Angel’s chest, slammed the iron bar down into his throat as hard as she could and held it there with both hands. She couldn’t literally choke him to death, but she got a satisfying sense that it hurt like hell.

“Looks like you’re about to be on the receiving end, _Mate_ ,” Spike jeered at Angel.

“Where’s Ira Rosenberg?” Buffy demanded, not the least bit amused by their banter.

Angel gritted his teeth, planted his hands on either side of Buffy’s and pushed upward,grunting with effort, until he could speak again. “Spike,” he snarled, “get your worthless ass over here and help me, you lazy fucking cunt!” Spike shrugged, vamped out and used his hands to push off from the wall and take a flying leap at the middle of Buffy’s back. Forewarned, Buffy rocked forward into a hand stand on the iron bar that she still held to Angel’s throat (making her skirt a belt) and brought her feet up to catch Spike square on the chin in midair. He crumpled in a heap onto Angel’s legs, getting several more kicks to the face for his trouble.

Buffy reached the top of her arc. Jerking hard on the iron bar, she pulled it against Angel’s chin, hard enough to break his jaw. Releasing her grip on the bar, she let her continued momentum carry her over into a complete somersault, landing squarely on her feet about two yards away from the tangled pile of vampire flesh that was Spike and Angel. Angel scrambled to his feet and kicked Spike several yards down the tunnel as Buffy pulled a stake from her sleeve shook her only slightly more than cheerleading length skirt down from around her waist, not satisfied with the extent to which it concealed either her cunt or her ass,and prepared to renew the attack.

“Bugger this!” Spike cried and skittered off into the depths of the sewers.

Angel looked murderously at Buffy, cradling his broken jaw in his left hand and brandishing the metal bar in his right. He stood his ground, but did not advance, on the ropes, but still dangerous. Buffy considered her options. She could probably stake Angel right now. She might never get a better chance. Even if Dr. Rosenberg was alive, Angel wasn’t going to give her any information that would help save him unless he needed to trade tales to stay undead. She charged, raising her left arm to block Angel’s defensive weapon, thrusting her stake heartwards with her right.

Angel’s left jab caught her hard in the mouth. The point of her stake skidded across his belly, ripping his shirt and his flesh open, but it was a shallow wound. He swung out with his elbow as she staggered back, intending to knock the stake from her hand but she held on. Pivoting into the direction of his rod-swinging follow-on attack, she drove her stake deep into the muscle of Angel’s right arm, just above the elbow. The swift, hard, from-the-shoulder downward stroke that he had been aiming at her head more than doubled the effective force behind her thrust, driving the wood through muscles and tendons, crunching and splintering it against bones that crunched and splintered in response. Angel screamed like a scalded cat. His rod fell, uselessly rolling off into the darkness.

Buffy plunged forward, bulldozing Angel to the ground. She hopped on top of him straddling his chest, doing her best to ignore the unsettling skin to skin contact between her naked crotch and his exposed, bleeding belly. She wasn’t going to be able to hold down a beast like Angel by delicately squatting over him like a prissy lady in a gas station bathroom. She grabbed the stump of her stake with her left hand and twisted it in Angel’s mangled flesh, pinning his right arm to the ground. With her right hand, she blocked his left handed snatch for her hair. “Where is Ira Rosenberg?” she demanded again.

Angel tried to answer her, but his jaw was shattered. Knowing Buffy as he did, he let his face slip into human form, let his arms and legs go limp, as if surrendering to her mercy. Knowing Angel as she did, Buffy saw this tactic for what it was. Still, it was sort of working. Digging her knees into Angel’s sides, like he was a horse, Buffy released her grip on his broken and bleeding right arm and pulled his good left arm hard against his chest. At least this gave her a good reason to lean forward just a little, putting most of an inch between his gut and her cunt. She knew she should stake him, that she could probably still jam her blunted bit of wood into his heart if she put enough force behind it. But the longer Angel lay still and apparently helpless, the harder it was for Buffy to work up the fire necessary for mortal violence.

‘But he’s not a mortal' Buffy silently argued with herself,‘He’s a vampire.’She killed vampires almost nightly, laughing and joking as they died. But this was different. The sight of Angel’s battered flesh lying prone beneath her was anything but funny. She had known him as he once was, had loved him, body and soul. She had longed for him, lusted for him, and already her lust had all but obliterated him. As monstrous as his recent acts had been, she still found it hard to finish with her stake what she had started with her cunt.

“Is Dr. Rosenberg alive?” Buffy asked, more gently than she wanted to. Angel nodded painfully.“Is he nearby?”Angel hesitated. Buffy kneed him hard in both sides, feeling indecently equestrian, like she ought to have spurs and a riding crop. “Is he nearby?” she demanded more sharply. Angel nodded.“Back towards the Mall access?” Buffy guessed. Angel shook his head feebly, then cocked it in the direction that they had been traveling, deeper into the sewers. Rage welled up in Buffy once again. “You gave him to Drusilla!” She accused. Angel couldn’t smile, but his eyes twinkled.

“Not _just_ Drusilla,” said an unfamiliar voice from the tunnel ahead. A chorus of laughter followed. Half a dozen vampires stepped from the shadows. Spike had gone for help after all. Angel freed his good left arm and made a grab for Buffy’s throat. As she jumped to her feet, still astride his chest, he rolled to the right, trying to knock her off balance, instead sending pain shooting through his body as he rolled onto his stricken arm. Buffy sprang backward, putting him between her and his advancing minions. They would either have to stop and help Angel or stagger over him one or two at a time, a great set up if only Buffy had a stake. Or a sword she amended, seeing a glint of metal in the hand of a large vamp, who was indeed stepping over the body of his fallen master.

Predictably, he lunged for Buffy’s midsection. She leapt above his stroke, kicked him in the face, brought both feet down on his arm and collapsed on top of him. The sword was thrown free as she had planned. It landed perhaps three feet from the spot where Angel had once lain and from which three vampires were now gathering themselves for an advance while the other two helped Angel down the tunnel. Buffy, lunged for the sword just as its owner, recovering himself grabbed hold of her right thigh and bit into her flank. She kicked him hard with her left foot, ripping great gashes in her flesh as it was torn from his jaws.

Buffy fell on her chest against the floor of the tunnel hard enough to knock the wind out of her, but hers was the first hand to close on the hilt of the sword, which she brought up directly into the face of her nearest competitor,a young female vampire in Daisy Dukes and a strapless bikini top. Hell’s skankiest ho staggered back, bleeding and screaming. The two vamps advancing behind her pulled up short. The swordsman made another desperate grab for Buffy’s legs, to keep her on the ground, but she swung her upper body in a smooth arc like a good cheerleader, severing his clinging hands above the wrists. Kicking the severed hands aside, she sprang to her feet and decapitated her cringing foe.

Surrounded by a haze of vampire dust, the Slayer rounded on the companions of her slain enemy, brandishing the fatal sword. Slowly, she let a wicked smile spread across her lips. The remaining vampires fled in terror. Buffy sagged. The smile melted from her face, leaving it a mask of pain and anguish. Leaning on her sword for support, she took off Willow’s sweater and tied it as tight as she could round her bleeding leg. Her makeshift bandage was infused with sewer slime, but there was no other way to control the bleeding. Despite her wound and the slippery walking surface, Buffy made her way back towards the theater at a fairly good clip. She was in no shape to hang around and see if the vamps would come back with reinforcements.

She moved quickly and quietly, uttering an unbroken string of curses only in her mind. Willow’s father was undoubtedly dead or dying. It was too much to hope that Angel and company would show him the mercy of letting him stay dead. Yet, once again, Buffy had had the murdering undead bastard within her grasp and had failed to summon the will to put an end to him. Once again, she had been weak,sentimental, stupid. She had let Angel get away.

**Author's Note:**

> The main timeline of this work is roughly contemporaneous with Lady's Choice Chapter 2 "Morning After", probably still earlier in time than the last scene of BtVS s02 e17 "Passion" though these events preempt that scene anyway.


End file.
